How Does a Trauma Nurse Turned Author View the World? – by Elizabeth Cart

I am Elizabeth Cart, author of Becoming Human, a short story collection. My very first story was in the paranormal genre. I submitted the story to Seventeen magazine in a contest. In retrospect, it might have been too much for that time in history. I did not win the prize but it was my first act of confidence at age sixteen. Later, college was consuming with studies and exams. Then, a nursing and teaching profession got in the way of creative writing. However, I was able to put my skills to task technically writing nursing curricula and alumni newsletters. Once retired from that profession, I began writing novels.

Since then, writing became as easy as my speed demon typing. Some things are just innate. However, the first novel was a throwaway! Who hasn’t done that? All you have to do is put it in a drawer, go back, and read it years later! I realized that I needed to read beautiful fiction all the time, listen to real-life conversations, and capture the essence of drama on paper. After all, every day is an adventure, seen or experienced.

I have always said I will die one day with a pen in my hand. Of course, now I must re-phrase, to include my hands on a keyboard. I believe that we must express ourselves this way to nurture our legacies, to fulfill our own creative destinies, to release all that we know and feel. It is the stuff of healing.

Short stories allow me more freedom than novels. I am one of those writers who needs to “change it up” to make the effort interesting. If you ask an author how they write short fiction, most will answer, “Just look around you.” There are prompts of enriching stories at every turn. It doesn’t have to be the whole long story of what has happened. Even a snippet will help you develop the rest, changing the characters, plot, or setting. Then, you can let the characters speak through you. My next collection is different but more uplifting. It is high time we pay attention to all of humanity.

Words are magical. You can create a visual on paper using words, letting the reader have their senses come alive! For many of us who have left the podium on the stage, or who have no interest in traveling the world giving speeches, writing becomes second best. I have pulled two novels out of that stuffy drawer, revised and edited, and they are almost ready for the next “hurrah.”

Times have changed. Books are bought online and many digitally read on a computer screen or handheld device. I understand we have to move with the times, yet, a bound book held in my hands will forever give me a thrill.

Becoming Human – Short Story Collection

One woman’s view of neighborhood antics, a man’s description of eight close calls with death, a heart-wrenching look into the life of a musical conductor who suffered a loss, a mother and adult son on a comedic shopping spree,a connection with a disgruntled cyber-friend, family and friends trying to keep the peace at a baby shower,grief and forgiveness at the end of a life, childhood friendship on a farm that ultimately brings distress, an aging woman’s dark night of the soul, an experienced female nurse who makes a shift in employment from hospital to doctor’s office, a Los Angeles sheriff who works a task force in gang territory,an irresponsible male truck driver who never wants to grow up, a female retiree who chose to live and survive in the badlands, father and son who witness a life altering event on the way to a ballgame, a single mother who goes through marriageable boyfriends, a single woman who faces a cancer diagnosis and chooses alternatives, two elderly sisters who spend a day at bingo together, a mother working through her own grief and loss, a young married couple living in Belgium under duress, a woman of senior age who just up and leaves her husband one day, a journey to become human from the perspective of a soul.

This book is available from the publisher, BookLocker.com, as well as from Amazon, BarnesandNoble.com, and many other stores. If purchasing from BookLocker, use this discount code when checking out to get 10% off: BACKSTORY

Elizabeth Cart shifted from the professional world of trauma nursing and teaching to writing. Becoming Human explores the honesty of grief and loss, self-reflection and the laughable eccentricities of life. Elizabeth has finished two novels that are forthcoming.

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